Further thoughts on the cultural labor of poetry and art. Not merely "is it good?," but "what has it accomplished?"...reviews of recent poetry collections; selected poems and art dealing with war/peace/social change; reviews of poetry readings; links to political commentary (particularly on conflicts in the Middle East); youtubed performances of music, demos, and other audio-video nuggets dealing with peaceful change, dissent and resistance.

Friday, January 22, 2016

A Lenten Journey: The Sand Opera meditations (an open call)

A Lenten
Journey: The Sand Opera meditations (an open call)

The Project

I’ve wanted to find ways of connecting the work of this book with the
work of other writers, artists, activists, scholars, and people of faith. After
Sand Opera’s publication in 2015, Jayme Stayer, S.J., wrote to tell me
that he had been praying with the poems as part of his daily Examen, the Jesuit
daily contemplation. I was touched to hear that he had intuitively completed
what my own morning Lenten practice over the Abu Ghraib testimonies many years
before had begun; that these were texts that needed to be prayed over as much
as read.

This Lent, beginning on February 10th 2016, I plan to
share one poem per day from Sand Opera on my blog, Behind the Lines, as
well as on Twitter and Facebook—as part of a digitally-collective fasting and
meditation through poems. But I wanted to make this about more than the
poems themselves. The poems are points of departure.I’m hoping that you
might add your voice to this conversation by choosing a poem from the collection
to write a short meditation?I’m thinking that short pieces of about
100-500 words that meditate on the poem through spiritual, political, ethical,
or artistic lenses—whatever suits you. Let me know what you’d like to work
with.Again, your faith or lack of faith are not at
stake; I'm interested in your voice and what you'd like to say.

For example, a meditation on “Black Site [Exhibit Q]” could explore
the meanings and politics of “black sites” in particular, or the problem of
incarceration and the prison system in the United States, or the implications
of entrapment on a more personal existential level. It could share suggested
readings or suggestions for action. For example, for a poem about Guantanamo,
it could share links to calls for closing the prison or Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s
memoir. However, I am happy with any way you wish to engage with the poems!

Further Background: Why Lent?

During
a Lenten season many years ago—a forty day season of penitence and fasting in
the Catholic Church—I awoke early every morning to read through and work with
the testimonies of the abused at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. I wanted to face
the darkness of this war, a war carried out in our names and in the name of our
security. At some point, after poring over the photographs taken by military
police at Abu Ghraib of their abuse of prisoners, although I am a poet, I
decided that I could not write my way into or out of them. In some respect, to
continue to circulate the photographs themselves, or to write poems from the
photographs, would only complete the total objectification of the bodies and
souls of those tortured Iraqis.

It was only when I stumbled on transcripts of the testimony given by
the Iraqi prisoners themselves (thanks to Mark Danner’s book Torture and
Truth) did I discover a way to slip inside that prison. The “abu ghraib
arias,” which opens Sand Opera, began simply a way to be with those prisoners
through reading their testimonies. However, I found the transcripts which were
too painful for me to read straight through; the only way I could bear to read
them was to work with them. So every morning, I sat down with a photocopied
page and a yellow highlighter, looking for words and phrases that vibrated on
the page, that seemed almost to lift up out of the page, and to trace my
highlighter over them, bearing down with them, trying not to be suffocated by
the story of torture.

Later, I would work with the testimonies of U.S. military personnel
who worked in the prison, as well as the Standard Operating Procedure manual
for the Guantanamo Bay Prison, to place the testimonies of Iraqis and Americans
in dialogue—a dialogue that they did not have in life. The poems that resulted
became part of a chapbook called abu ghraib arias, first published in
2011; years later, they became a pivotal section of Sand Opera.

This Lent project would be a circling back to that original practice,
but also a widening to include all of your voices alongside the voices that
made their mark on me.

abu ghraib arias

To See the Earth

Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront

About Me

Poetry books and chapbooks include *Pictures at an Exhibition*, *Sand Opera*, *A Concordance of Leaves*, *abu ghraib arias,* *To See the Earth,* *Instants,* *Primer for Non-Native Speakers,* *Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Poems of Lev Rubinstein,* and A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky*. Scholarship: *Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941.*